I woke up this morning at 3:00AM. My first conscious thought was of Chef Boyardee pizza kits. At first I couldn’t imagine why. I hadn’t seen the kits in years and didn’t even know if they were still made. Then more of the dream I had been having surfaced as I got up to go to the bathroom. In the dream, twelve-year-old-me was in the kitchen at Hopewell Presbyterian Church with other members of the Youth Group. We had these Pizza Nights on a regular basis as I was growing up in Long Creek. We met on Sunday evenings. On these special nights, we would assemble early and use the pizza kits to make dinner for the group, eat together, and then have a Bible study or other lesson conducted by Mr. And Mrs. Bob McMurray.
I looked forward to these meetings for reasons ranging from my general nerdiness … I have always loved learning of any kind … to the cute boys in the group, like the McMurrays’ son, Jay. We often made crafts like Bible verse posters for the Sunday school rooms. It was during those sessions that I became obsessed with Mr. Sketch Scented Markers. I’m sixty now, but today, I can still close my eyes and smell those watermelon and berry scented markers and the fun of Youth meetings.
The McMurrays made learning about the Bible fun and interesting. I’ll always remember a lesson about how lucky we were to be living in America where we have religious freedom. We learned about the restrictions on gathering for religious purposes in Communist Russia in a very impactful way. That evening, when we arrived for Youth Group, the McMurrays led us to a storage room in the basement, closed themselves in with us, and started our lesson. We had no idea why we were in this dark, stuffy, tiny room. As the lesson progressed, the door suddenly flung open and Jay and several other older boys came in wearing Russian military dress with fake guns to break up our “illegal” meeting. The visual of that, the experience, is still vivid to me nearly fifty years after the event.
Hopewell Presbyterian Church was always somewhere I wanted to be (except after preaching on Sunday mornings, when my brother, Curtis, and I hurried our parents along to the car so we could get home to see Fred Kirby and The Little Rascals on television). I loved Sunday School. It was another excuse to read and I was always looking for those. What I enjoyed most about the sermon afterwards was the traditional hymns: The Old Rugged Cross, In The Garden, How Great Thou Art and Amazing Grace were favorites. I enjoyed preaching much more once Hopewell called Associate Pastor Vernon Dodd into our midst. He was just out of seminary, young, vibrant. I didn’t ever fall asleep during his sermons and still remember being impressed when he water skied with his young son on his shoulders at Camp Eva Good, a Presbyterian church camp that Hopewell members visited each year in Transylvania County, NC.
Hopewell was also where I attended Brownies and Girl Scouts from age seven to twelve. I loved not only the learning component of scouts, but also the social aspect. We were blessed to be led by Marion Alexander, Pat Dellinger, and Sandra Parker over the years. I loved the process of earning badges and was always trying to win the award for selling the most cookies!
Hopewell Church was a sanctuary for me, a place I felt calm. Even on my wedding day, when you would expect me to be anxious and nervous since I am generally the world’s biggest worrier about everything. Instead, I felt relaxed, sure. (Darryl, on the other hand, looked like a deer in the headlights.) As my Dad and I stood in the vestibule at the back of the church, the bells began to ring, the familiar sign that the service was about to start. Tears sprang to my eyes for a minute. Then I grasped Dad’s arm, looked down the aisle across the heads of all the people that I loved, and floated to the front of the church I had grown up in and loved with all my heart. Reverend Smythe had helped prepare us for this with the church’s required premarital counseling sessions. Many of his lessons and advice have popped into my head and been helpful over the forty years we have now been married.
But why am I dreaming of Hopewell now, out-of-the-blue, I wondered? It didn’t take long to figure it out. Browsing on YouTube before bed last night, I saw a news item that shook me to the core. It seems Dylann Roof is seeking to have his guilty verdict and death penalty conviction overturned due to ineffectiveness of counsel. You may be asking Who is Dylann Roof? if you aren’t someone like me who watches every show out there about killers or if you hear so many terrible things day-in-and-day-out that you have forgotten his name in the time that has passed since June 17th, 2015. Dylann Roof is the 21-year-old ninth grade dropout who became radicalized by white supremacist mumbo-jumbo on the internet, then shot and killed nine African-Americans at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC. Eleven innocent parishioners had been in a Bible Study group when Roof entered the church. They welcomed him into the group. As one of the reverends in the group spoke, Roof pulled out a .45 Glock pistol and shot and killed nine of the eleven.
There is absolutely no doubt of Roof’s guilt. He was on surveillance tape leaving the church, with the gun, right after the killings. Fleeing north, he was caught the next day in Shelby, NC (thirty minutes or so from my home). He immediately confessed to two FBI agents. He became the first person in history to face both state and federal death penalty eligible charges. He was found guilty in Federal Court and sentenced to death. He later pleaded guilty in State Court to avoid a second death penalty conviction. No one has ever deserved the death penalty more.
Not long after this mass shooting, Darryl and I were in Charleston visiting our best friends who had recently moved there. They took us on a tour of the waterfront and surrounding neighborhoods. As we rounded the block and came onto Calhoun Street, I immediately recognized the church from news coverage. I had full body chills and tears immediately sprang to my eyes. Standing there in front of the church, I closed my eyes and said a prayer, not for the first time, for the nine souls who had lost their lives and for the two who will relive that day over and over again for the rest of theirs.
The church is beautiful, grander and more imposing than the church I grew up in. A sign out front told me it was founded in 1816 by a group of free and enslaved African-American Charleston residents. My church, Hopewell Presbyterian, was officially founded in 1762. I stood in awe, thinking about how both churches have been that sanctuary for thousands in their over two century histories. I imagined that the people who called Emanuel AME Church their home church felt the same pride I did for my own home church’s history. I imagined that the church was where they went for peace, uplifting, community, and salvation, much like Hopewell was for me growing up. My heart ached when I pictured that horrific, senseless, obscene act that had happened there to good Christian people doing nothing more than exercising those freedom of religion rights the McMurrays had taught me to value so much.
I know that as a Christian we are supposed to have forgiving hearts. I’ve yet to find it in mine to forgive the monstrous acts of Dylann Roof. I hope he finds Jesus and truly repents. I pray that he seeks forgiveness for his sins and has come to know the path he was on is not the correct one. But I mainly pray for the souls of those he murdered in cold blood, for the other members of that church who have to live with the aftermath of his senseless crimes. I pray for the judges who have to make decisions on whether or not to rehash the trials and verdicts. I pray that future jurors, if he does get a new trial, make the same decision that the previous jurors did.
Most of all I pray that the members of Emanuel AME Zion are comforted and uplifted by all the wonderful memories they have of their beautiful church as I am by those I have of Hopewell.
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“When Justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to the evildoers.”
Proverbs 21:15
Robin's Eggs 